Darkening Dawn (The Lockman Chronicles Book 5) (22 page)

An overwhelming urge to do what Kit asked filled Elka. She felt…hungry. Starving, in fact. And sharing her deepest secrets with Kit was the only thing that could feed her. Her stomach even growled.

Some kind of magic.

Was Kit really a mortal? Or a pretender like Elka?

She pulled up the last of her will and fought Kit’s strange influence. “I can’t.”

Undeterred, Kit brushed up and down Elka’s arm with the backs of her fingers, drawing cool streaks across Elka’s skin. Elka shivered.

“Friends share,” Kit said. “Share with me, Elka.”

Cold zapped the back of Elka’s brain. Sprinkles of lights flickered across her vision. The remains of her self-control tore apart. “I’m afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Your uncle. He’s going to…use me.”

The cold emanating from Kit’s touch spread into Elka’s mouth and tasted like mint ice cream.

Kit’s eyes narrowed. She glanced toward the room’s open door, a heavy beige metal like the kind that belonged to a janitor’s closet or a boiler room. She left Elka to close the door. The latch’s
snap
echoed through the room.

Elka, frozen in place, watched Kit move. For the few seconds she was away from Elka, Elka felt as if a piece of her skin had been torn off, leaving a part of her exposed and raw. She almost begged Kit to come back, but she didn’t need to. Kit returned to her and touched her arm again.

A wave of relief pushed a sigh from Elka’s lungs.

Her breath came out in a cloud as if she stood in a freezer.

What kind of magic does this girl have?

Elka had never seen anything like it.

Kit smirked. “You have questions.”

Elka nodded. For some reason she was afraid to speak, worried her words would come out in a jumble. Whatever power Kit had, she had laid it on Elka so thick, Elka hardly understood her own emotions. Her mood could turn in any direction at any second, all depending on Kit’s whim.

“Like I said, friends share. I’ll tell you what you want to know about me if you tell me what I want to know.”

Elka nodded again. That hunger to please Kit rumbled deep inside.

“What does Uncle Eee want from you?”

When she spoke, Elka’s mouth felt numb. It took a great deal of concentration not to mumble or stutter. “My horn. He’s going to grind it for dust. It’s extremely powerful.”

Kit’s eyes widened. She licked her bright pink lipsticked lips. “Your horn? What are you, Elka?”

“I’m a unicorn.”

Kit gasped. For what seemed an eternity, she stared at Elka as if seeing her for the first time. Then she lifted her hand from Elka’s arm and pressed her palm against Elka’s cheek.

“Show me.”

Every muscle in Elka’s body locked. A small coil of heat in her chest pushed back against Kit’s oppressive cold. “No.”

Kit’s wide-eyed expression wrinkled into a disappointed frown. “What do you mean, no?” She pressed her palm more firmly against Elka’s face, as if trying to force a thought into her mind. “Friends sh—”

“No,” Elka shouted. “I won’t.”

Now Kit pouted. Elka wouldn’t have been surprised if she had stomped her foot, throwing a little girl tantrum.

“Why not?”

Elka didn’t have to think before answering. “That part of me doesn’t take commands. Not even from something like you. Whatever you are.”

“You think you can fight me?”

Elka lifted her chin, staring down her nose at Kit. That heat inside grew. “I’m warning you. If you force me to shift, my true form will be the last thing you ever see.”

“I don’t think you understand.” Kit pressed her other hand against Elka’s opposite cheek. Elka’s heat shrunk against a stronger wave of cold. Suddenly, Kit looked so beautiful, like an angel, practically glowing.

Elka would do anything to make this angel happy.

Everything around her disappeared except for the sight of Kit’s precious face and the smell of peaches. It made her think of that time her father took her to the orchard, the basket heavy with peaches, how she had tried to carry it by herself, a five-year-old convinced she could do anything a girl three times her age could. Her father had taken the basket’s handle in one hand while she gripped it with both of hers, and together they carried it out of the orchard to the car. They had driven home. Auntie Velka had made pie that same night.

Kit’s pulling from my memories.

This didn’t frighten her. It comforted her. Kit was touching Elka’s mind in the most intimate way. Not even a lover could penetrate so deeply.

“Friends share, Elka,” Kit said, her voice like the sound of wind chimes in the breeze of a summer day. “And we are friends. Forever.”

Elka didn’t feel cold anymore. She felt numb, disembodied even. As if she could float away. Or merge her essence with Kit, become a part of her.

Kit smiled. Elka had never seen a smile so beautiful.

“Show me,” Kit said.

A tear ran down alongside Elka’s nose. This was…wrong.

No. It was so very, very, very right.

Show her your true self, Elka. Can’t you see she wants to be a part of your life, accepting of who you are?

Elka stepped back to give herself room. Kit’s hands slipped off of Elka’s face, leaving behind a painful emptiness that brought on more tears. But Kit’s angelic smile assured her. Soon Kit would be stroking Elka’s flank, rubbing up and down the length of her face, scratching behind her ear. Elka could even take her outside, let her straddle her, take her for the ride of her life, galloping away from Earl and his wicked crew.

They could be free.

Together.

Kit nodded encouragement.

Elka shifted.

And the shift, as it should, broke Kit’s spell.

Clarity crashed down on Elka as if she had dropped off the far side of a sugar high. She chuffed, glaring at Kit, that thing pretending to be a girl.

Like another girl who Elka hated.

Kit’s mouth hung open, her smile still lighting her eyes. But it didn’t look so beautiful anymore. It made her look vacuous and dumb.

“Oh, Elka, you are beaut—”

The girl-thing choked on her words as Elka stabbed her horn into its heart. The sound of its breast bone cracking echoed like the door latch had. A spray of blood shot from the thing’s dumb mouth. The smile drained out of its eyes.

Elka yanked free and watched the thing drop to the floor where it curled up and continued to cough blood that glistened against the tile under the room’s harsh fluorescent glaze.

In the last seconds of its life—whatever it was; Elka might never know—its face quivered with gorgeous fear.

A kill.

Elka had forgotten how much she needed that.

But she had severely shortened her window to get to Whisper and get the Chosen One’s location. For as satisfying as killing the creature that lay at Elka’s hooves had been, Elka still had one more death to deliver before she could finally rest.

Chapter Thirty-Five

J
ESSIE HAD NO IDEA HOW
long they let her stew in her cell. Felt like a week, but was probably closer to twenty-four hours. In that time, no one had brought her food. The only water she had came from the nasty sink and tasted like gravel.

Without anything more to do, she napped fitfully, her growling stomach and the cot’s hard frame keeping her from reaching any depth of sleep.

She had just come out of a half-dream half-memory of the day she found the soul artifact that had let Gabriel Dolan’s spirit enter her body and nearly take over. She could vividly feel the cool metal cube and the engravings on all sides. The artifact even had a smell—like the cup full of change Mom used to keep on her dresser (that Jessie used to pilfer to support her black makeup habit).

Then she heard her father’s voice.

It’s going to happen again.

The
tock-tock
of heels on the hard floor down the corridor from her cell roused her from the dream. But her father’s words echoed on her way out.

It’s going to happen again.

She shook off the ragged excuse for sleep and climbed off the cot, crossed to the bars. The distinct sound of the shoes behind those footsteps told Jessie who was coming.

Sure enough, Kinga came into view, a manila folder tucked under her arm, at least two inches thick with papers. When she saw Jessie peering out at her from behind the bars, Kinga lifted an eyebrow while an almost invisible smirk touched her lips.

“I see you’re awake,” she said.

Jessie cleared the sleep out of her throat, rolled her eyes. “You can see all you want of me through the cameras in here.”

Kinga reached Jessie’s cell and made a show of scanning the inside. “I don’t see any cameras.”

So the bitch had given up her phony decorum to play snide with Jessie. Good. Jessie hated people who didn’t say what they meant.

“That’s the point of secret cameras, right? Key word being
secret
.”

Kinga-Roo’s tiny smirk grew a little. “Nice to see your…adventure…hasn’t dampened your attitude problem.”

“It’s your problem, not mine.”

“Cute.” Then, as if their bitter exchange had never happened, Kinga-Roo brought out her massive file and offered it between the bars.

Jessie stared at it as if Kinga was handing over a bag of dog shit. “What’s that?”

“Take it.”

“I appreciate you offering some reading material while I waste away in here, but how about some lunch instead? Or is that part of your plan to get me to cooperate? Starve me?”

“Take the file and I will get you something to eat while you read.”

That offered trade made Jessie all the more skeptical. She stepped back, shaking her head. “I’ll pass.”

Kinga pushed the file halfway between the bars. “It’s just a file. It can’t hurt you.”

“I’m not an idiot.” Jessie nodded at the folder. “If that’s coming from you, it’s not anything I’ll want.”

Instead of getting mad, Kinga broke into a full smile, showing a row of bright teeth with too sharp canines. For a second, Jessie wondered if Kinga was another undercover werewolf like her stepdad had been. Then she tossed the idea. The new regime showed too much contempt for supernaturals to let one rise in their ranks.

“What if I told you this is
your
file?” Kinga asked.

Jessie’s gut tightened, which made her hunger pains hurt. She wanted to yak, but all she’d bring up was bile-flavored air. “The Agency kept a file on me? Of course they did. I’ll bet it’s a real page-turner.”

“It’s definitely illuminating.”

“Here’s the thing,” Jessie said. She felt her lip curl as if it had a mind of its own. “I’ve lived that file. There’s nothing in there it can tell me that I don’t already know.”

Kinga sniffed. It was probably supposed to be a laugh. “I wouldn’t be so sure.”

When Jessie tried to swallow, she couldn’t work up enough spit, though she could still taste the rust from her last drink from the cell’s faucet. She glared at the file which had turned from dog shit into a pipe bomb ready to blow the second Jessie touched it. The bomb’s shards would shred her.

Kinga must have seen Jessie’s fear. Her lips morphed into yet a different kind of smile, the kind of satisfied smirk a person gets right before scoring a winning point. “I suppose you realize I lied. The file just might hurt a little. But it won’t kill you.”

“Comforting.” One word, but it still came out scratchy and weak. She was shoveling a lot of coal into Kinga’s self-righteous furnace by letting herself look meek. But the bitch had done a good job of freaking Jessie out about what sat between the covers of that bland folder.

“I have a number of appointments,” Kinga said, her voice going all corporate. “Please don’t force me to read it to you.”

Despite her nerves, it was Jessie’s turn to grin. The general’s whore wasn’t going to let Jessie out of this. If so, Jessie would try to make it as inconvenient on her as possible. “I wouldn’t want to keep you.”

“I bet you wouldn’t.” She waited a moment, maybe hoping Jessie would give in and take the file. The folder started to tremble slightly. The thick file was getting too heavy for her to hold out much longer.

Jessie didn’t budge. She kept out of Kinga’s reach. If she wanted Jessie to have it, she would have to drop it on the cell floor. That, of course, would go against Kinga’s organizational ethics. The sight of all those papers fluttering every which way would drive her insane and make her shriek like a banshee. (And Jessie had heard a real banshee shriek. Mortal ears were never meant to hear such a racket.)

Kinga had to give in. She pulled the folder back and rested it on her forearm. “Very well.” She flipped open the file and cut the stack of papers like a deck of cards to a page marked with a neon pink sticky note Jessie hadn’t noticed when Kinga had held the file out for her.

The knot in Jessie’s gut doubled and tripled. Her stomach growled. The sensation nearly doubled her over. Her throat narrowed, making it hard to breathe. Her heart pounded hard enough that Jessie could feel its pulse in her ears.

Was this what a panic attack felt like?

The girl who once fought monsters single-handedly, who used to be a monster herself, was now reduced to a twitching tangle of nerves over a fucking stack of paper.

Pathetic.

Kinga scanned the page before her, then looked up at Jessie. “Are you ready?”

Jessie waved a dismissive hand and turned away to strut to the cot as if nothing in the world could bother her. She just hoped Kinga hadn’t noticed the hand she’d waved was trembling. “Whatever.”

She sat on the cot’s edge, crossed her arms, sweaty hands tucked into her armpits to hide their shaking, and gave Kinga the kind of look she used to give her mom right before a lecture on Jessie’s “unacceptable behavior.”

Kinga cleared her throat and returned her attention to the marked page. “Subject’s biological father reports his concerns of subject’s sanity. Feels condition could make her dangerous to Agency allies.”

Jessie snorted. “Give me a break. My dad worried I might go batshit because I’d been turned into a vampire. That’s so shocking. However will I go on?”

“Are you going to let me finish, or do you intend to interrupt me after every sentence?”